There are no longer students milling the hallway with the classic yellow-paper pass. Instead, Hickman has switched to a digital “E-Hall Pass” for the 2024-25 school year.
Hickman’s “E-Hall Pass” is run through a company called Securly. This company’s mission is to help schools “keep students safe, secure and ready to learn.” With tools ranging from device monitoring to budget analysis to classroom management, this company casts a wide net of educational tools.
Securly boasts that their digital hall pass both reduces hall pass usage and prevents student meet-ups.
Senior Leander Brandle voiced his thoughts on the transition between the traditional and digital hall passes.
“I feel like that’s a lot more convenient than having to carry around a physical pass,” Leander said.
To use the digital hall pass, students must log into their CPS Portal, open the SecurlyPass icon, find their teacher in the database and request a pass to their selected location. After this, the teacher can approve the pass and the student may leave the classroom.
Learning specialist Will Ross agreed that digital passes were more convenient. Due to his position, he writes many passes in a day.
“I can kind of just stand there and click a couple buttons rather than write out a pass every single time [which] is way more efficient for my position,” Ross said.
However, not all students agreed on the convenience of the digital changes.
“I just don’t want to have to take my Chromebook out every time I want to go to the bathroom if…we’re not using it,” Layla said.
In addition to frustrations over having to get her laptop out, Layla found issues with the limits on the number of students that could be in an area.
“It would always tell you places were full, especially during study hall, it would just be like, ‘No,’” Layla said.
In contrast, students such as senior Cooper Myers liked the digital hall pass because students can’t create fake passes anymore.
“The hallways aren’t constantly full of people,” Cooper said.
Freshman Molly Schnedler exerienced a digital hall pass in middle school and it has followed her into high school.
“It is better than paper passes. It’s going to take a while to get used to, but then it’ll be more efficient,” Molly said.
Administer Anna Rorvig sopke on the benefits of a big data system to keep track of all students.
“With paper passes, all you’re left with is your a teacher’s memory on how many times a student has left their class. As a former teacher, [I] struggled to remember when a kid left my classroom and when a kid came back, or if they did even come back,” Assistant Principal Anna Rorvig said.
While many think these passes will be good for Hickman, there are still concerns about some aspects of the passes.
“Subs have a hard time getting into the system and had to go back to paper passes [in middle school],” Molly said.
When students are given a pass, they have 10 minutes to return to class before their pass is flagged. This information is forwarded to Assistant Principal Cole Blackburn who monitors for repeat offenders.
However, Ross had concerns about how this will be monitored.
“If a student is gone for 10 minutes using the restroom, who is checking on those students?… When a student is gone for a long time, what do we do?” Ross said.
According to Blackburn, hall monitors will eventually have access to the system so they can find students who have exceeded their 10 minute allotment.
At the moment, however, hall monitors do not have access and there is no monitoring system for the hall passes.
Even though there were problems adjusting to the new digital pass system, overall there are high hopes for the passes.
“I think there’s still things that will absolutely take some time to adjust to and get used to, but through the first week, at least, I think it’s been very positive,” Ross said.